There are still artists recording to tape, then following the full analogue path and those recording to digital and going the full digital path. I expect both will survive for a good few more years. Bootlegging digital formats is much easier regardless of file size and quality, and easier than getting tape nowadays (remember when we killed music by home taping? We gave it a paper cut compared to the blood-letting streaming and the internet have caused).

I seldom buy new vinyl, and usually from analogue mastering etc (it supports the artists with higher royalties, makes many happy that they made a physical format, and gives me pleasure both aural and visual). I won't be subscribing to a streaming service any day soon (as already opined, cannot usually find what I like).

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Are you waiting for loneliness to paralyse? Are you waiting for sister midnight to anaesthetise?

I wonder ....Vinyl was gone when cassettes was introduced ( in theory ) and then when cd was released and when MP3 was released etc etc... still none of that completely killed it merely cause they are just simply perhaps not that musical or whatever like RTR and Vinyl( let's leave cost of gear and cost of ownership out of that for now etc)...

Anyway , do you know that some new artists are actually releasing on vinyl as well ? Perhaps the artist gets more money from sales if it's in a more secured / difficult format like vinyl ( I dunno..)

Cassette was introduced as a medium for dictation . It was never intended by Philips as a music medium . As always the lowest common denominator becomes the standard and we were blessed with the music cassette. Masushita/Sony belatedly tried to rectify this gross abarition with the still born Elcassette.

However neither of these were intended to replace vinyl.That was Cd's job. It still took about 6 years or so after the release of CD (itself nearly 20 years after the invention of the cassette) and then vinyl suddenly disappeared off the shelves in the early 90s.Planned genocide by the record companies. I remember that day like yesterday. One day CNA and all the big supermarkets had shelves full of vinyl,next day the LPs were gone-Poof! Ha-ha but vinyl would not die! Cd is almost dead now but vinyl?

You clearly are not listening to the same music as me. Just last week I bought a couple of great new albums (GYBE and a compilation of cosmic synth explorations from the 60s-80s) all analogue all through. Yes, they sound good digitally but I get artwork, a thick paper poster which is worthy of framing, and a digital copy for the iPod (or Flac thingy). I also picked up David Bedford's 'Nurse Songs For Elephant' which is truly mind blowing, some Beefheart (Trout Mask Replica is far superior on vinyl), Klaus Schulze, PFM, Edgar Froese, some classical, Philip Glass and some Springsteen. All on analogue to analogue to analogue. The odd crackle is not even noticeable, and no background hiss....

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Are you waiting for loneliness to paralyse? Are you waiting for sister midnight to anaesthetise?

Remember, it is still grooves read by a needle. The grooves are just formed in a more precise manner. I think this is a great idea as at the end of the day the vinyl will sound much better with less noise.

If you are looking for 100% pure analog I doubt you will find new modern albums today done in pure analog. Everything is digital these days. Why? It is just easier and takes up less storage space.

A fellow at a recording studio tells me that a digital multitrack recorder enables him to edit and finalise 10 recorded tracks in one day. In the analogue tape days this would have taken a week. Time is money, and when you need R20k a day just to tick over, there is no way you could go back to analogue

With de-essers, individual note editing facilities (to avoid one instrument playing the same note to drown out another) available at the click of a mouse, you can achieve results unthinkable 15 years ago

A fellow at a recording studio tells me that a digital multitrack recorder enables him to edit and finalise 10 recorded tracks in one day. In the analogue tape days this would have taken a week. Time is money, and when you need R20k a day just to tick over, there is no way you could go back to analogue

With de-essers, individual note editing facilities (to avoid one instrument playing the same note to drown out another) available at the click of a mouse, you can achieve results unthinkable 15 years ago

Absolutely - to all intents and purposes the bulk of my collection (by a country mile) is digital. Thus whatever I said is of course purely anecdotal (to use a phrase heavily abused in the USB/SPDIF thread )